For those National Hunt sentimentalists
amongst us, it was a pleasure to see the famous Red Rum colours carried by the
Donald McCain trained Only a Tipple at the recent Pershore Plum Festival race
evening. Red Rum is the only horse to have
won the Grand National three times in 1973, 1974 and 1977 and the colours,
which were also seen in the race in 1975 and 1976 when Red Rum came second,
feature a yellow horizontal diamond which originated from the logo of the
legendary horse’s owner, Noel Le Mare’s company, Northwest Construction. Only A Tipple is owned by Ginger
McCain’s window, Beryl, and the 5-year old ran into 5th place in the
Tiddesley Wood Yellow Egg Plum maiden hurdle.
The £12,000 feature Pershore Plum
Festival Land O’Plums Chase was won by the progressive Casino Markets,
following up his Worcester success earlier in the month. The Emma Lavelle trained gelding stayed on
gamely to beat Richard Newland’s Tiger Trek, trained in Claines. The Land O’Plums chase appears to
be a lucky one for Lavelle, whose horses are in excellent form. The trainer has run 3 horses in the race in
the last 6 years and all 3 have won.
National Hunt racing is returning
this week from a 10-day break which allows jockeys in particular, to enjoy
holidays with their families. The jockey
table at Worcester has never been more competitive, with the lead changing
meeting to meeting. Aidan Coleman is
currently ahead of Sam Twiston-Davies by 4 points, largely due to his
association with trainer Jonjo O’Neill.
O’Neill has won the Worcester
trainer championship for the past two years but has not had quite the same
success this season until recently. With
Coleman on board, O’Neill enjoyed 2 winners from 7 runners at the last meeting,
including Mr Shantu who is owned by long-time supporters of Worcester, Richard
and Donna Evans. Mr Shantu (pictured above) took gamely
to his chasing debut, having also won a hurdle race at the course last summer. The trainer’s title is all to
play for with just 3 points separating Dan Skelton, Philip Hobbs, Nicky
Henderson and O’Neill.
The top owner’s position has also
changed hands and is now held by JP McManus, again thanks to the recent good form
of Coleman and O’Neill.
The 2017 racing fixture list was
officially published last week. There
will be 14 more race meetings across the country in 2017 than in 2016, and the
1,496 meetings will be staged over 363 days of the year. The only blank days for racing will be
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
The total number of jumps
fixtures are up to 602 from 594 and Worcester will be staging 20 fixtures from
May 11 to October 25, which will include the ever popular Ladies Day,
coinciding with Derby Day, on Saturday 3 June.
The gates open for afternoon
racing tomorrow at 12 noon and the first race is due off at 2pm.
